Anne Carson

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and classicist, widely regarded as one of the most important and influential poets writing in English. Born in Toronto, Ontario, she studied Classics at the University of Toronto, receiving her BA, MA, and PhD there. She has held academic positions at the University of Michigan, McGill University, New York University, and other institutions. Her work consistently defies genre, blending classical scholarship, personal lyric, prose essay, and translation across books such as Autobiography of Red (1998), The Beauty of the Husband (2001), Nox (2010), Antigonick (2012), Float (2016), The Albertine Workout (2014), and Wrong Norma (2024). She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry for Wrong Norma (2024). Nox won the Griffin Poetry Prize, and Men in the Off Hours won the Griffin Poetry Prize (2001). Carson has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Award, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice), and numerous honorary degrees. She has translated Sappho (If Not, Winter, 2002), Sophocles (Antigonick), and Euripides (Grief Lessons, 2006). Her work is celebrated for its intellectual audacity, its fusion of the classical and contemporary, and its structural experimentation. She divides her time between the United States and Canada and continues to publish and lecture widely.